From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— Nuclear fusion company SHINE Technologies is receiving a $263 million federal loan to finish construction of a medical isotope production facility.
When complete, the Chrysalis facility in Janesville will produce the sole domestic commercial supply of molybdenum-99, a radioactive isotope used for diagnostic imaging.
The loan, from the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing, will bankroll remaining construction work on the facility and installation of the specialized technology needed to produce the isotopes. The agency has made a conditional commitment, signaling its intent to provide the loan once certain technical conditions are met.
The facility is expected to start producing isotopes in the next 18 to 24 months and reach full production in two to three years.
It will support 200 construction jobs during the final buildout of the facility and 150 full-time jobs when it’s operating.
EDF Director Gregory Beard said during a virtual presser yesterday that these isotopes currently need to be shipped from overseas, during which radioactive decay causes them to lose half of their useful life. Production capacity is also limited.
“This important technology will help make medicine more affordable in the United States, because of this facility here,” Beard said.
Once complete, the facility is expected to supply as much as 75% of the nation’s molybdenum-99 demand. The project is part of a broader national security effort to create more secure domestic supply chains.
SHINE founder and CEO Greg Piefer says he expects the facility to produce 1 billion doses of nuclear medicine in its lifetime.
“It’s exceptionally vital for American health care security that this project comes to completion,” Piefer said.
Piefer said Chrysalis will be the first fusion-based production facility operating at an industrial scale, producing about 20 million doses of medicine per year. That would make it the largest medical isotope production site in the world, he wrote in a social media post.
“Creating a stable domestic supply is long overdue and will actually allow the U.S. to become an exporter of these important products once again,” he wrote. “But Chrysalis also establishes something bigger. It proves our approach to commercializing fusion works — solve real problems, generate revenue, and build toward fusion energy from there.”
Piefer also thanked U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, in his remarks yesterday.
The federal loan will be repaid over a 15-year period, Beard said.
See the release below, and listen to an earlier podcast with Piefer.
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